It makes sense that many followers of politics are fixated on election cycles. There’s so much at stake in each election, and public policy often hinges on who is serving a term. But political and economic developments often take place over much longer time frames, that cannot be understood within a four- or six-year election cycle.

Historian Gary Gerstle, author of the recent book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, calls these longer stages in our history “political orders”—a concept he developed with Steve Fraser (co-editor of a previous book). On this episode of How to Save a Country, co-hosts Michael Tomasky and Felicia Wong talk to Gary about political orders as a way to conceptualize political time. Gary takes Felicia and Michael on a journey spanning nearly a century, exploring the domestic and international factors that led to the first ascension, and then the demise of the New Deal and neoliberal orders. The trio also envisions also different possibilities for the next political order.